Dover, NH and Osterville, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 07/25/2007 -- Measured Progress® and schoolBrains™ by aptium llc announced today a partnership that will integrate Measured Progress’s Progress Toward Standards (PTS) Item Bank into the schoolBrains Web-based assessment analysis and student information system. The partnership will allow the two companies to engage in joint promotions and enable Measured Progress and schoolBrains to support each other’s services.
schoolBrains is a powerful, secure, Internet-based student information and testing and performance assessment solution unlike others available today. schoolBrains delivers to teachers and administrators the tools they need to track, manage, analyze, and improve student performance. It provides real-time analysis that enables teachers to make timely, informed decisions about their students’ skill sets and appropriate changes in instruction and curriculum. Although the PTS Item Bank is not associated with any Measured Progress statewide testing program, it contains assessment items of the same quality as those in statewide assessments. The initial pool of several thousand items that will be available through schoolBrains will cover reading and mathematics for grades one through high school.
“Through this partnership, school districts now have a delivery platform that further leverages the high quality of the Measured Progress test items, all of which are matched to numerous states’ standards within schoolBrains,” said schoolBrains President and founder Rob Pemberton. “schoolBrains enables schools to easily create, deliver, and quickly score assessments, with student results tracked and monitored through dynamic online reports at the school, classroom, and individual student levels—a key feature that makes schoolBrains such a valuable tool for schools and teachers,” Mr. Pemberton said. schoolBrains’s analysis and information tools are being used in the Barnstable, Massachusetts, school district, which has also contracted to use the PTS Item Bank.
“Adding Measured Progress’s PTS Item Bank to our current schoolBrains service will make our interim assessment process much easier and more complete,” said Patricia Grenier, Ed. D., Barnstable’s superintendent of schools. “Teacher ownership of the interim assessment process has been an important part of making our system of using data to inform instruction work. We have been writing our own questions and building our own interim assessments, but having the questions already in schoolBrains makes that process so much easier. It provides ownership for the teachers, while reducing the time we have to spend writing questions and putting them into schoolBrains,” Dr. Grenier said.
Dr. Grenier cited two added features of the PTS Item Bank: “Measured Progress provides information about each question that will help us build more reliable and valid tests. And with so many questions available, teachers will be able, on their own, to construct interim assessments as a follow-up to re-teaching a particular standard.”
“Measured Progress is recognized for high-quality educational assessment and professional development programs,” said Measured Progress President and Chief Executive Officer Stuart R. Kahl, Ph.D. “Our goal is to help build educator capacity to use multiple forms of assessment to improve teaching and learning.”
“This partnership with schoolBrains represents another method for educators to access our standards-based assessment resources. It also brings together two companies focused on delivering exceptional service and easy-to-understand information educators can use to adjust curriculum and instruction and improve student learning,” Dr. Kahl said.
About Measured Progress
Measured Progress is a Dover, New Hampshire-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving instruction and student learning in standards-based classrooms. For nearly 25 years, Measured Progress has successfully partnered with more than half of the states across the nation in assessment programs affecting millions of students. The organization offers solutions that integrate state- and district-level assessment resources and professional development. Measured Progress professional development services and assessment resources support the development of standards-based curriculum and instruction and help build educator capacity to create and use a wide range of assessments to accurately measure and improve student achievement. The organization is also the nation’s leading provider of alternate assessments for students with complex and severe disabilities. Please visit our Web site, http://www.measuredprogress.org, for more information.
About schoolBrains
schoolBrains by aptium llc is an Osterville, Massachusetts-based software company that provides the highest value Human Interaction Management solutions and services to forward thinking organizations. aptium has developed a comprehensive portfolio of Internet-based hosted solutions that manage key human interactions and business processes., In 2005, after several years of development, aptium released schoolBrains, the education industry’s most flexible, fully integrated education management solutions delivered via the Internet and designed to help improve and support the performance of schools and students in the 21st century. For more information please visit: http://www.schoolBrains.com or call (800) 504-0565